TCG

TCG is a diversified drink-led pub business with a quality estate of pubs and bars located across the UK, spanning Newquay to Inverness, and Cardiff to Norwich with particular strength in London and the South.

The result is that TCG now have monthly profit, cash flow, funds flow and balance sheet projections, all mapped to — and fed from — their monthly General Ledger trial balances

The Challenge

In an increasingly tough trading environment, TCG required a financial planning solution that would enable them to maintain tight control of their cash and profit positions. TCG needed a rolling 3 year budget and forecasting model, integrated to their General Ledgers and wanted to remove Excel from the process given its inherent challenges. TCG were acquired by Stonegate in September 2015.

The Solution

Working closely with Tahola, TCG chose IBM Cognos Planning and asked Tahola to implement and manage their solution. TCG have a Managed Solution from Tahola. This means TCG specified in detail what they required, using Excel spreadsheets to demonstrate the complex calculations. Tahola then built ‐ and now maintain ‐ all of TCG’s financial models. This has enabled them to achieve automatic re‐forecasting based on actual movements: profit, cash and working capital requirements at Group, Company and House level. Tahola also helped TCG to integrate Cognos Planning into its data warehouse where they maintain previous budgets and forecasts for both comparison and integration with EPOS, Payroll and General Ledger transactions. The Cognos Planning output can then be manipulated by any Location attribute.

The Result

The result is that TCG now have monthly profit, cash flow, funds flow and balance sheet projections, all mapped to — and fed from — their monthly General Ledger trial balances. TCG’s Performance Indicators allow them to monitor actual vs budget/forecast and, says Bignell, “encourage us to sensitise our forecasts and to report variances in actual cash movements vs our cash projections”.